Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Last Saved Date in a Footer.

Last Saved Date in a Footer

Lori wants the right side of the footer for her worksheet to include the date the workbook was last saved. Every time she tries to create a formula to do this, Excel displays an error message that states the "string is too long" and that she needs to delete some characters. She's not sure she understands why this is happening or how she can get the date she wants in the footer.

There is no actual formula that can put the last-saved date in a footer. Excel has no way (unlike Word) to put this tidbit of information there. There is a way you can do it, but the solution requires the use of a macro. The reason is because you are accessing system information—information outside of Excel itself—and that information can only be retrieved using a programming language such as VBA.

One approach is to add some code that runs whenever a workbook is saved. The code would update the desired footer with the current date:

This macro, which should be stored in the ThisWorkbook object for the workbook you want to affect, updates the footer for the currently active worksheet. If you want to affect all the worksheets in a workbook, then a small change to the macro is in order:

The drawback to this macro is that you need to remember to run it periodically, so it is not quite as automatic as the previous approaches. You could, however, place the single line at the heart of the macro into the Workbook_BeforePrint event handler.

There is another approach you can use. This one involves requesting from Windows the actual date and time a file was saved.

This macro is designed to run whenever a workbook is first opened—it is saved as the Workbook_Open procedure of the ThisWorkbook object. The workhorse of the macro is the line that calls the FileDateTime function. This function can be used to determine the date and time any file was saved. It requires a full path name of a file, which is supplied by the FullName property of the ActiveWorkbook object. This date and time is then placed in the right footer of all the worksheets in the workbook.

Remember, as well, that the limit of what you can place into each section of the header or footer is approximately 250 characters. So if you adjust the macros to add more information to the right portion of the footer, make sure that it doesn't add up to that many characters, or you may have problems with the macro.

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This tip (2190) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Last Saved Date in a Footer.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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I am trying to put the date my Excel for Max was last saved in the footer. I followed your example. I am not knowledgeable with macros. I was to get on the developer tab. I selected Editor and then selected the ThisWorkbook. I got a blank VBA input space and entered the following from your website:

Not really. (Although you can click the link at the end of the article to see this tip on the site for later versions of Excel.)

I suspect you aren't putting the macros in the ThisWorkbook area as you must. Any macro that begins with "Workbook_" must be placed in the ThisWorkbook area. In the VBA Editor, use the Project Explorer to double-click the ThisWorkbook object for the workbook in which you are working. This action (double-clicking) displays a code window. It is within this code window that those macros beginning with "Workbook_" must be placed.

-Allen

2013-05-03 12:50:01

Michael Mercier

I am running Excel 2007. I copy pasted this program as described. the first program for active worksheet and also tried the seceond program for all sheets.Neither one puts anything into the footer.Is excel 2007 different?